Adios!

T-minus four hours until I leave for the airport, and I have just finished rearranging my gear for the last time. Trying to pack for a 14 week trip has really served to highlight exactly how materialistic I am.

In fact, I turned into a total hoarder.

Thankfully, my friend Jan helped me with some perspective last night. I had, among other things, several Dopp kits CRAMMED full of toiletries that I don't even use. She kept asking me what I was bringing them along for, and my stock answer was, "In case..." In case what? An emergency arises that calls for 12 sample size Neutrogena face washes? This went on for a while and it was, frankly, embarrassing to realize how much junk I believed I needed. Where does it come from? This compulsion to bring so much crap with me that I haven't used once all year long. I can live without witch hazel. I do it every day.

But now we've pared it all down to the contents of a carry on and a daypack.

And this is nothing short of miraculous for me, the person who can't leave the house without an adult version of a diaper bag so that I will never be without something I might need. Several years ago my sister Laura and I went to Las Vegas for her 21st birthday party. We weren't even going to be there 72 hours, and still managed the fill the ENTIRE back of her Xterra with bags, sacks, suitcases, backpacks, pillows, etc. Our luggage trolley at the Hard Rock was almost too heavy to maneuver. So the fact that I am living for 3.5 months out of a carry on bag, and that I've had to pack for: beaches, volcanoes, rainy season, sunny weather, cold weather, hiking gear, clinic clothes, plus all the books I need for Spanish and Medical Spanish, is kind of totally amazing. But it didn't come easy. I've spent the last 4 days wondering what I've needed, buying what I think I'll need, getting home, reevaluating, packing, unpacking, repacking, making returns, buying more stuff and on and on and on. When what I should have done was pack a few outfits and some cash and bought what I needed when I got there.

But enough about packing. It's done.

The last time I was out of the country was the summer of 2003, which I spent in Prague, completing my Bachelor's degree. Once we'd been accepted into the Prague program, we were required to read 6 books off a reading list about Prague's history and culture, keep a journal of our reading, and write an essay about each choice. I was a little put out initially, but it turned out to be an incredibly wonderful opportunity to learn more about a place that's intrigued me for as long as I can remember. So when I arrived in Prague, I felt acquainted to the city in a way I never would have otherwise, and I loved that. And I am really regretting not having that same feeling going into this trip. I feel unprepared, intellectually and emotionally. Happily, I will have Miriam to answer my questions, but I feel like I haven't done my homework, which is one of the worst possible ways to feel in my little obsessive compulsive personality disorder universe. I purchased some of Rene Castillo Otto's poetry collections and I read a lovely novel called Hummingbird House, but I still feel really green about Guatemala and Guatemalans.

Regardless, I am happy-anxious and ready for the summer to begin. I've been slogging through school and working more hours than I should have and saving saving saving my money for months and I'm ready for it to begin.

Also, I am really excited about the school I am going to! It's named after Guatemalan Nobel-prize winning poet, Miguel Angel Asturias, and it's one of the most highly recommended schools specializing in Medical Spanish. I feel like both sides of me, the one who has a Bachelor's in Literature and Anthropology and the one who is currently in nursing school will feel at home there and that makes me very happy.

And if I may be so bold, I feel a little like Harry Potter right now. I'm setting off on an adventure, going to live in a town I never knew existed until just recently, in a place where they speak a language I don't know. And while Platform Nine and Three Quarters is a much cooler way to begin a journey than Nashville International Airport, I have a suspicion that The Land of Eternal Spring might be just as lovely a place to be as Hogwarts.

Shower the City You Love with Love

It's almost 3am, and I leave for Guatemala in 27 hours. Nursing III finals wrapped up on Thursday, and since then, I have been dashing about trying to get ready to leave for the longest trip I've ever taken.

Meanwhile, Nashville is recovering from a 100 or 500 or 1000 year flood.

In the days following Katrina, like so many others, I got to work volunteering in any way I could. And that's when I found out from the Red Cross that the people who were being deployed to the Gulf had all kinds of fancy disaster training. I thought, I wanna be ready next time. So I signed up for the training and in the months that followed became a member of the Red Cross's national Disaster Services Human Resources team and the local Disaster Action Team. In the 5 years since Katrina, I've been asked to activate, but have never been able to secure the time off work in order to deploy.

And then the flood happened in the city I love. The city that's been home to me for as long as I can remember. And I have the fancy training now, and the kickass disaster vest. And I'm leaving.

I've spent the past several days on the verge of tears. It takes hardly anything to set me off. I know I'm exhausted from the end of the semester and am fried from trying to get out of town. But I'm also aching at how much was lost here, and I'm sad that so much remains to be done and I will not be here to do it.

It sounds a little arrogant to say that. But my saying that has nothing to do with any kind of confidence in my own ability. Rather, it comes from the confidence I have in the people I know. The ones who have slept very little since the storm and who will continue their tireless work until it is finished. I want to spend the summer beside these people, giving my time to the place that I love.

I'm trying to remind myself that there is work to be done all over the world, and I am privileged to be able to give of my time in Central America this summer. But a part of me still feels guilty and indulgent, leaving now.

Who, What, When, Why

In three weeks' time, I will be in Guatemala. My flight lands around 11am, and I'm not sure if I'll spend the first night in Guatemala City or Antigua. For the first five days, I'll be with lifelong friends who will be down there visiting family. I'll either head straight to Antigua with the guys, and stay in their favorite hostel, Jungle Party, or stay in the capital with my friend Miriam, where we'll rent a car and possibly head up to an Orthodox monastery with her parents, or stay put in the capital with her grandmother before heading to Antigua.

Miriam will be spending the summer in Antigua, which is about 4 hours from Xela. Four hours if the buses are on time, and the roads haven't flooded. (May - October see a lot of rain.) While in Antigua, she will also be studying Spanish. But as a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt, she'll spend the majority of her time in musty archives, doing research for her dissertation.

I will be in the highlands, living at elevation in the second largest city in the country, with a population of just over 100,000. I'll spend 5 hours a day studying Spanish with one-on-one lessons, and once I'm considered proficient enough, I will begin volunteering in the afternoons in local health clinics and possibly rotating on a traveling rural health team.

Although Spanish is the national language, the majority of the population are indigenous Maya, with many additional indigenous languages. I have the option of learning one of those languages as well, K'iche', but since I'm already focusing on Medical Spanish, I'm not sure how much I can take on. My dream goal is to be proficient enough upon returning to be able volunteer as a medical interpreter at a place like Siloam Family Health Center. But I don't think that is very realistic since I will only be there three months. Worst case scenario, I am pretty confident that I will be able to come home and perform patient assessments in Spanish during my final semester of nursing school.

I will be living with a host family who do not speak English, and this is what has me the most nervous. Not them in and of themselves, but the first several days, living in a stranger's house, not speaking a common language. My hope is that within a few days I will have picked up enough to have basic conversations with them over meals, but who knows.

Finally, why? For one thing, I have been restless for a while. The last time I was outside of the United States was the summer I spent in Prague (my true love city) in 2003. For another thing, this summer feels like the last one for a while where I can do something like this. That something being taking three and half months off and living in another country. Next summer, God willing, I will be in a nurse residency program and for the 3 - 5 years after that, I'll be doing a master's program. And somewhere along the way I'd like to settle down and acquire some kids :) So I felt that if I didn't do this now, I might not get to for a long time. Also, I desperately want to be bilingual, and I want to serve the Spanish speaking population here in Nashville in my nursing practice and volunteer jobs, and I haven't made headway on learning Spanish here in the States. So why Guatemala? For one thing, Miriam, one of my best friends, will already be there. And at 4 hours apart, it's feasible that we will be able to travel together many of the weekends, hopefully throughout Guat and into Mexico and Honduras as well. In practical terms, Guatemala is relatively cheap, is gorgeous, is pretty safe, and is allegedly one of the easiest places to learn Spanish because it's fairly accent free.

That's all for now.